For those who don’t know, a hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which cloud developers, engineers, programmers and others involved in software development collaborate intensively on software projects.

The typical goal of a hackathon is to create usable software, although in this case, the hackathon was a platform for Simple Technology Solutions apprentices to gain valuable experience and learn how to work in a team setting.

Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used (like AWS) the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers.

While one apprentice worked with a team that developed a tool aiding in the rescue of human trafficking victims for the nonprofit Polaris, other Simple Technology Solutions team members worked on an application that aided in making the stress of pet adoption a more seamless and virtual process through the use of machine learning for the Best Friends Animal Society.

All in all Simple Technology Solutions apprentices participated, gained new skills, and networked with other participants.

Over the course of 15 hours, hackers will collaborate with their team to solve technological problems that will help organizations combat disasters or get relief in times of crisis. Teams will compete against each other, demo their ideas, and our esteemed judges will decide who will win the overall competition.

Hackers can choose to solve one of five AWS Customer challenges below. Each organization below will be onsite to give an overview of their challenge, offer guidance or further explanations, and be there for overall support throughout the duration of the hackathon.

Best Friends Animal Society

About:

For over 30 years, Best Friends Animal Society has been running the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals and building effective programs that reduce the number of animals entering shelters. The mission of Best Friends Animal Society is to bring about a time when there are no more homeless pets.

Challenge:

Develop a functioning tool (app, site) that can improve the pet adoption process. This tool will provide much needed efficiency between shelter representatives and prospective adopters with regards to home visits. Using AWS solutions on image recognition and AI/ML technologies, this tool will create a virtual home visit feature for prospective adopters to upload images of their home, yard, neighborhood, as well as text fields to add home size, location, etc. These shelter representatives are constantly having to travel for these in-person home visits and this new tool will help digitally simplify the solution. Providing this new feature in the adoption process removes barriers like out-of-state in-person home visits and give time back to shelter representatives to help get animals into caring homes.

GameChanger

About:

GameChanger’s mission is to leverage gaming, technology, and innovation to improve patients’ quality of life. Through video games, character-based academic scholarships, and cutting-edge technologies like virtual and augmented reality, GameChanger breaks down barriers for children facing long or short-term hospital stays, and particularly those who are isolated for treatment.

Challenge:

Develop a tool to help GameChanger facilitate a variety of actions during online gaming events to participants. This tool should enable GameChanger staff to manage and distribute digital assets in real-time during these online events. (ex. Digital download came codes, digital giveaways such as game keys for Steam, Origin, Xbox, etc.) At times during online events, 5,000+ keys could be distributed at peak hours, and maybe 50,000 over the course of a week. This tool should have a user interface for GameChanger staff with login/password to allow them to distribute assets to specific events. The tool should also have the ability to upload/download digital codes from a file (.csv), automatically deliver codes via API hooks and triggers and have the ability to enable email notification to recipients with AWS SES.

Polaris

About:

Polaris is a leader in the global fight to eradicate modern slavery. Named after the North Star that guided slaves to freedom in the U.S., Polaris systemically disrupts the human trafficking networks that rob human beings of their lives and their freedom. Their comprehensive model puts victims at the center of what they do – helping survivors restore their freedom, preventing more victims, and leveraging data and technology to pursue traffickers wherever they operate.

Challenge:

Develop an automated, interactive, and public-facing communication tool for Polaris (chat/text bot, voice skill, etc.) that facilitates the reporting of information on perpetrators, victims, and criminal networks in an effort to disrupt human trafficking. This tool should assess for indicators of human trafficking and gather relevant and actionable details (e.g. type of human trafficking, means of control, location, dates, names, physical appearance, demographics, etc.) that can be shared with law enforcement, and then internally cataloged in a standardized format and analyzed.

Thorn

About:

Thorn is a nonprofit that builds technology to defend children from sexual abuse. The Internet did not create child abuse, but it has democratized it. We know that child abuse permeates all parts of the Internet from the Open Web to the darkest parts of the Deep Web. Thorn works across all of these environments to build tools that find victims faster, deter abusive behavior and make platforms safer.

Challenge:

Develop a tool that can analyze data from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) which enables law enforcement to easily kickoff child sexual exploitation cases. The number of reports NCMEC currently sends overwhelms law enforcement and provide just the raw data of individuals cases along with simple filters to direct their investigations.

This challenge will leverage machine learning technology to prioritize incoming reports. By empowering law enforcement to filter and analyze NCMEC reports, they will be able to discover the most at-risk children, recognize image trends, locations, ages, and sex, as well as be able to deduplicate cases if similarities arise. Additionally, this tool should be able to leverage information on results of closed cases to give law enforcement insights on what has worked well or poorly.

WeRobotics

About:

WeRobotics is a 501c3 non-profit organization in the United States and a non-profit civil association in Switzerland. The purpose of WeRobotics is to foster the safe, ethical and effective implementation of emerging robotics technologies for social good programs throughout the global South. In order to accomplish that mission WeRobotics establishes localized robotics for good innovation labs called Flying Labs, including Peru Flying Labs which focuses on drone operations for global health and disaster resilience.

Challenge:

Develop a tool that can improve feature detection from aerial imagery technology for disaster response and prevention. In conjunction with Tanzania Flying Labs and the city of Dar es Salaam, WeRobotics hopes to provide support to disaster response and prevention. This tool should learn and understand the impact level of damage caused to aid in enhancing emergency response efforts. Currently the aerial technology used is limited providing only raw imagery and this challenge will focus enabling a new tool to conduct a variety of actions, (for example: count damage structures in one location, identify areas of flooding, provide estimated level of action needed, prioritize locations based on impact, etc.) This tool should be able to compute risks and vulnerabilities in a disaster area that can shape decisions toward response and improvements to disaster resilience.

From the article: “Among the customers is Adrian Rich, principal of Simple Technology Solutions, Inc. His company, a 25-person local government contracting business, initially had three people dedicated to a role in HR and administration.

“We managed benefits via internal resources. We had a Director of Operations. But we needed to find ways to provide the full complement of employee benefits that allowed us to compete with other companies in the market,” said Rich, who found the company through a web search.

Transition to Open-Source Cloud Solution

Challenge

Develop a GSS solution that produced a repeatable process in a fully-automated development environment.

Details

April 12, 2018Simple Technology Solutions

Categories

Change Management
Monitoring Management
Data Management
Development

Background

A large U.S. Government Security Agency was experiencing significant delays and excessive program costs associated with using the Data Centers 1 and 2 for their IT infrastructure. Overall costs associated with program resources, times to provision, management control, and numerous IT management-related challenges significantly affected the CIO organization’s ability to effectively deliver responsive and consistent services to mission customers.

The inability to manage the competing demands of scope, schedule, and budget was mainly due to factors outside the control of the OCIO. Updates to the existing systems proved to be costly, and any discernible changes would take several months to execute. Due to the limited operational capabilities of the Data Center setup, the agency employed the services of Simple Technology Solutions to develop a robust Cloud Solution that will be compatible with both AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Analysis

Simple Technology Solutions leveraged their skills and expertise to evaluate, select, and integrate a wide range of tools, based on the unique needs of the the client’s environment.

Solution

Simple Technology Solutions implemented a custom-tailored GSS solution, shaped to the unique requirements of the client. Drawing on years of experience leading the “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC) movement, STS developed an AWS/Azure proof of concept (POC) to transition the Data Center 1 and 2 environments to a faster, more reliable cloud setup. Our engineers automated the design/build of the new cloud infrastructure solution via the development of Cloud Formation Templates (CFT). This allowed for dynamically spinning up new virtual machines and whole fully intact IT environments configured to accepted GSS specifications. The Simple Technology Solutions solution produced a repeatable process in a fully-automated Development environment. The final result is a secure, fully functional “GSS in the Cloud” solution that makes it possible to stand up IT environments in minutes instead of weeks.

Benefit

The introduction of IaC into the client’s IT environment makes it possible to rapidly and easily change their existing system configuration in a safe and reliable manner. Simple Technology Solutions engineers used code to automate the process of setting up and configuring a virtual system, generating a fast and repeatable solution for replicating the process. Now the client will only have to build the virtual environment once; after that they will be able to consistently repeat the process of generating a virtual server by simply running the same code. Producing significant savings in both time and resources.

Simple Technology Solutions engineers use code to automate the process of setting up and configuring a virtual system, generating a fast and repeatable solution for replicating the process for future use.

Setup Resource Tracking and Metadata Capabilities

Challenge

Ensure data tagging is setup and is tested for validity and the system allowed for easy tracking and search capabilities.

Details

December 20, 2017Simple Technology Solutions

Categories

Business Intelligence
Cloud Services
Metadata
Resource Management

Background

A large U.S. Government Agency required additional enhancements to an existing infrastructure and applications. They needed a system set up that allowed for easy tracking of resources as it applied to their billing of internal clients. They wanted to monitor data organization related to project management and budget administration within the existing infrastructure and applications which were setup by Simple Technology Solutions. It was imperative that the organization be able to determine where expenditures were happening, while also guaranteeing that they had a tagging system and policy in place that was enforced and utilized enterprise wide.

Analysis

Simple Technology Solutions conducted an assessment and determined that project managers within the agency needed to have access to an application which utilized dashboards, reporting and metadata tagging so they could see how much they were spending monthly and ensure that these numbers were aligned with current billable rates.

Solution

To meet this new requirement, the Simple Technology Solutions team lead developer created custom Python scripts that would be mapped to the cloud database that would enable identified items sent to the cloud platform that would be validated and tracked against a List of Values (LOV), which ensured that each piece of data was correctly tagged and validated as per the the agency’s requirements, incorrect tagging was subsequently flagged in the system. Metadata tagging would assist with accurate reporting and tracking as the agency would then be able to categorize resources in a variety of ways, i.e. by purpose or by owner allowing for customized reporting and allow for quick identification of required information. With the tagging setup, costs related to individual programs were not incurred without knowing which internal client was responsible for the charge and project managers had the visibility they required.

Benefit

By creating and enforcing the tagging policy, the agency is now able to track which internal client owns what system, what work product they are accountable for, and who is responsible for payment. They are able to programmatically identify resources through descriptive tags and this makes it much easier and simpler to understand the purposes and provenances of individual tags. The agency now understands on a greater level what their resources are doing. They are in a better position to assess situations and thereby adjust costs when needed.

By Simple Technology Solutions implementing this solution, the agency has experienced a myriad of benefits. The customized AWS IAM policies are reusable and included version tracking. Through version tracking, an administrator can see what was changed, what has stopped working, and assess the overall speed and feasibility of the system as a whole.

Details

Categories

Background

A large U.S. Government Agency reached out to Simple Technology Solutions because of issues they were experiencing with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, which at the time were lacking and non-specific. The organization outlined the fact that they had various business lines (10) spread out between commercial and government accounts, and individual policy must be paired up as well as regularly updated with the accounts. The agency had been managing this process manually and individually, and it proved to be taxing. They were simply looking for a better and more automated solution to dealing with this policy handling process.

Analysis

Simple Technology Solutions offered an assessment and analysis of the agency’s issue and realized that individual policy roles based upon job duty or responsibility must first be established. The organization needed to have roles for Administrator, Billing, Networking, and more created, and in turn, specific accounts had to be assigned access to said roles. The AWS IAM policies needed to be all encompassing in this regard so individual updating on a separate level could be avoided at all costs.

Solution

After analysis, Simple Technology Solutions decided the best way to solve the issues that the agency was experiencing was by creating Teraform IAM policies across all of the accounts. Then, after applying custom code to the policies, they could be applied across the entire cloud via only a few clicks of a button.

Benefit

By Simple Technology Solutions implementing this solution, the agency has experienced myriad benefits. The customized AWS IAM policies are reusable and include version tracking. Through version tracking, an administrator can see what was changed, what has stopped working, and assess the overall speed and feasibility of the system as a whole.

Simple Technology Solutions worked closely with a large U.S. Government Agency to setup Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and services to help maintain and control their platform on AWS.

Under a Small Business Administration (SBA) approved JV, the government buying entity can recognize the economic status of the 8(a) while considering the past performance and financial capability of the minority (but “large” business) joint venture partner, ACG Systems.

The 5-year contract ceiling is valued at $97 million for the 3 awardees, with work being performed worldwide.

The scope of this contract includes the procurement and delivery of relevant handheld radios, cellular handsets, radio telephone, accessories, chassis, mounting enclosures, power supply, installation equipment & engineering services.

“This contract will allow STS to lead the convergence of critical communications and radio infrastructure’s convergence onto IP networks and cloud technologies while providing unifying communications systems and custom solutions for our Naval customers,” said Adrian Rich, Managing Principal at STS. “We are at the dawn of hyper-convergence of radio & critical communications solutions onto Internet-based infrastructure based on trends we are seeing at SPAWAR, FirstNet, DHS TACCOM II and beyond. We look forward to being a drum major in the march toward this radio to IP convergence.”

ACG Systems provides industry and government with operationally effective, cost efficient, unifying communication solutions. ACG integrates, distributes, and supports leading brands of digital and analog communication equipment in support of major national and regional airlines, federal government agencies, airport authorities and other related industries.

Aaliyah Melton, 20, joined the On-Ramps to Careers’ Tech-Reconnect program in April 2017 with curiosity about Information Technology careers. She didn’t have much information about the variety of careers available to her or what her interests in the field would be. Little did she know that in six months she would proudly call herself a “Web Developer” and be telling more students about the great opportunities in tech careers.

Cloud Services Setup & Migration

Challenge

Supporting a large U.S. Government Agency with the setup of Cloud Services that included a full range of capabilities.

Details

December 4, 2017Simple Technology Solutions

Categories

Cloud Migration
Data Migration
Big Data
Security

Background

A large U.S. Government Agency was experiencing challenges with the overall set up, functioning and updating of their cloud architecture. They were searching for a platform that could support both a comprehensive business intelligence and analytics that could also deliver a full range of capabilities to support high workloads and complex deployments. In parallel, they wanted the platform to simultaneously offer real-time data and timely insight to users across the enterprise. They also needed a platform to meet their requirements for security and the protection of their data.

Analysis

Simple Technology Solutions conducted a formal assessment and analysis of the current processes of the agency including their overall need and the organizations’ goals. Through the analysis, Simple Technology Solutions identified that the agency required a unique platform that would enable easier installations, easier maintenance and updates, allow for the ability to run reports in real-time to uncover of new insights to make faster and more informed decisions, deliver high quality analytics, and support end user needs as well as management needs.

Solution

Simple Technology Solutions determined the best method for addressing the cloud architecture needs of the agency was to identify and setup a platform that could be streamlined without the need for the agency to stand-up their own infrastructure. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) 11G and 12C in the cloud was identified as the best solution for their needs. The team worked to quickly setup the platform which included custom development work, architecture analysis, security analysis, testing, and implementation as well as the preparation to introduce new tools to further help streamline the process in the future such as Chef.

Benefit

By implementing this solution with 11G and 12C, installations and updates will be automated and handled on cloud-based servers to ensure patching is executed correctly. Through the use of automation and streamlining, the agency can launch applications, conduct testing, run updates, and more across the entire organization via the click of a few buttons. Simple Technology Solutions configured OBIEE 11G and 12C to codify the entire process which enabled the offering of a reusable solution and limited installs to multiple locations.

Simple Technology Solutions expertise paired with Oracle technology allowed a successful collaboration to implement cloud services for a large U.S. Government Agency that supported protection of data as well as security.